Tagged: Spencer Repeating Rifle

Samuel L. Jackson in The Hateful Eight

Samuel L. Jackson as Major Marquis Warren in The Hateful Eight (2015)

Vitals

Samuel L. Jackson as Maj. Marquis Warren, bounty hunter and veteran Union Army cavalry officer

Wyoming Territory, Winter 1877

Film: The Hateful Eight
Release Date: December 25, 2015
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Costume Designer: Courtney Hoffman

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Happy birthday to Samuel L. Jackson! Born December 21, 1948, the actor hustled for two decades before his breakthrough performance as Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction (1994), his first of six collaborations with Quentin Tarantino, and he is currently the highest-grossing actor of all time with his films having collectively grossed more than $27 billion worldwide.

The actor’s most recent prominent role in a QT joint was the wintry western The Hateful Eight, released ten years ago this month on Christmas 2015, and an appropriate watch for tonight’s winter solstice.

Jackson leads the ensemble cast as Major Marquis Warren, a former Union Army cavalry officer now working as a bounty hunter who prides himself on his deadly reputation:

My bounties never hang, ’cause I never bring ’em in alive.

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Clint Eastwood as “The Man with No Name” in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Clint Eastwood as Blondie, aka "the Man with No Name", in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

Clint Eastwood as Blondie, aka “the Man with No Name”, in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

Vitals

Clint Eastwood as Blondie, aka “the Man with No Name”, taciturn bounty hunter

New Mexico Territory, Spring 1862

Film: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
(Italian title: Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo)
Release Date: December 23, 1966
Director: Sergio Leone
Costume Designer: Carlo Simi

Background

Today marks the 90th birthday of screen legend Clint Eastwood, born May 31, 1930, in San Francisco. (Between John Wayne on May 26, James Stewart on May 20, and Gary Cooper on May 7, there must be something about being in born in May that positions an actor for stardom in the Western genre!)

After Eastwood’s initial success on the TV series Rawhide, he traveled to Italy to star in a trio of Westerns directed by Sergio Leone, firmly establishing the significance of the “spaghetti Western”. In A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), Eastwood ostensibly played a variation of the same mysterious, laconic gunfighter alternately known as Joe, Manco, or Blondie, respectively, but immortalized in cinema as “the Man with No Name.”

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